The Nelson Award Uganda

#SDGAction42806

Description

Intro

The Nelson Award is a concept by MasterPeace, to recognize the efforts of local Nelsons (Young Change-makers) in our communities and ultimately the country with a valuable award and attention. The Award is awarded to those who best represent and promote the ideals of the world’s most famous Nelson, Nelson Mandela, and use those ideals to rise up and make a positive impact on their community, society, and country at large. The Award is a sculpture, a certificate and a small amount of seed-money that will be given to the most interesting (effective) young change-maker in the country.

Objective of the practice

Shine the light on young change-makers and recognize their amazing work. They do good for others but also inspire others to do the same. Internationally their projects can be scaled by other MasterPeace clubs all over the world. By appreciating their work we open doors for them at Universities, institutions or clubs that heard about the great job they do. 
 
As stated above, we launched an open call for nominees in the first week of January, 2018. The call invited change-makers to submit their work, showing how it has impacted their communities. Inspired by the Nelson Award Global, an initiative by MasterPeace Global, and in support of SDG 11, we made an open call using our Social media sites, especially Facebook, calling upon young change makers in Uganda to submit their stories to be nominated for this Award. 
Using these nominations, we qualified one story to come up with our Nelson of the month. 
The winner was always announced on our Facebook page at the beginning of each month and awarded with a certificated that automatically qualified them for the national Nelson Award. 
Before finding a winner, we subjected the nominees to a dialogue with the Jury to assess their stories and projects, and it was from this meeting that the Jury decided which story had more impact and supported a particular SGD. 
For example our last winner, 23 year old Winnie Ainembabazi: A project planner by profession, an entrepreneur and founder of Girl Power Foundation Uganda has held 3 Girl Power Conferences where she brings empowered girls to talk to the less privileged girls in her village Kanungu about self esteem with a call for them to stay in school. Kanungu District. 
Her foundation currently has 3 groups of young mothers whom they teach basic skills in home management, financial literacy and better farming methods 
Also, 20 year old Kenneth who has so far donated over 7000 books to people around Uganda and has contributed to sdg 8 by creating jobs at his office where he employs 5 skilled fellow youth and several other support staff because he believes creating more jobs for the youth is the best way to reduce crime and uplift those in need. 
We will organise an Award Ceremony to celebrate the top 3 Nelsons. They will be awarded with seed money to grow their ideas.

Partners

We have several stakeholders in place when executing the Be a Nelson Award. First of all MasterPeace Global who always coaches when needed and shares our stories on international platforms and e-learning databases.Then we have our jury members who carefully select the monthly winner. The local-changemakers in Uganda that are nominated to be a Nelson.The local people that are helped by our nominated Nelsons and Journalists & press who spreads our story and that of our Nelsons and Friends & family of the nominees that attend our Award Ceremony.

Implementation of the Project/Activity

We have several mechanisms in place to secure the smooth execution & quality and therefore impact of our Nelson Award. Without our local Ugandans (young)changemakers we would be nowhere. So first and foremost we need to get to know them all. We promote the “Be A Nelson” Award on different (social) media channels to get the attention of these successful changemakers. If they get to know us; we get to know them! Because of our active social media campaigns we get approximately 10 changemakers who submit ideas monthly and slowly growing. The story submitted had to include; Nominee’s biography, information about their project or initiative and how this project has impacted on the community around them.To make sure we nominate the best ideas we carefully selected a jury. Together we are responsible for selecting the monthly winners and the overall winner by the end of the program. They are all respected, experienced and authorities on social change.Prossy Kawala, Journalist and Founder of Center for Media Literacy and Community Development (CEMCOD).Pherrie Kimbugwe, MasterPeace Uganda Ambassador/a socialite/Nightclub manager at Guvnor. Kenneth Gimugu, the former President of Uganda Boxing Federation. Clet Wandui Masiga, A famous activist for the rights of Bio-Scientists in Uganda and CEO – Tropical Institute of Development Innovations (TRIDI).Henry Ssebayiga, a media personality from TOP TV Uganda. Paul Sentamu, a Pastor from the suburbs, Friends of Christ Church in Kamwokya. We come together Monthly to discuss the winner of the month according to selection criteria we put in place together with MasterPeace global in the Netherlands. The criteria are:1Contributes (at least more than once) to society, making the world a better place, based on peace, human rights, respect and interconnectedness.2Works (mainly) voluntary or non-profit (i.e. social entrepreneurs) with their talent and expertise to benefit the local or regional community. Not only with words, but also with concrete acts.3 Is an inspiring, positive role model for the local society. 4Develops initiatives with impact on social change. In case the impact is still very limited then work should be easy to upscale.5Is not yet awarded or complimented by many, but their work surely deserves more visibility.6Is preferably young (between 14 and 34).We connect the monthly Nelson winners with each other to inspire, connect and share thoughts. This way they can possibly co-create in the future and even have bigger impact. At the end of the year we will chose the Nelson of the year out of the 12 monthly winners and celebrate during our ceremony.

Results/Outputs/Impacts

Impact of the Nelson Award so far:
All our nelsons stories reached the right audience. We were contacted by The Ashoka Africa Youth Leader Vincent Otieno to nominate worthy candidates for the Ashoka African Youth Championship competition 2018/2019

All our 10 monthly Nelsons, automatically qualified for the competition. Such a role and recognition by a major key player in the change making space was a great achievement for the Nelson Award project and the nominees. It’s from this initiative that over 50 personalities in Uganda joined us in our new campaign called 100 Days of Peace, commemorating the 70th Anniversary of The Declaration of Human Rights Document .

Better Opportunities for our Nelsons
In February, we shared the story of 2o year old Joy M. Natocho a university student at MUBS – Makerere University Business School who without any financial support, under her kisenyi project;
mobilised friends, collected and distributed basic needs like clothing, food among others to the homeless children in kisenyi slum.
They also encouraged some of those who had parents but had escaped from home to return to their homes so that they could start schooling again.
She also took it up against her self to offer time every week to speak to young people against the use of drugs and getting involved in vices like theft, fighting which we believe is major in mind set building or change.
Her free talks to children and youth especially girls to believe in themselves has seen over 20 girls stay in school because they can access sanitary pads through her.

Since she became Nelson of the month of February, her life has been on a constant rollercoaster.
“Being voted Nelson of the month changed my life. It earned me a nomination in The Ashoka African Youth Champion competition, I was invited to give a presentation at the UNDP in Uganda and got me a job. I was also hired at the Empowered Civil Organization (ECO) after the Chief Executive Officer read my story on the Master Peace Club Uganda Facebook page. I have also met more people with the same passions, shared ideas with them, bringing my dream to start my own non-governmental organization a step closer. Even my friends who used to laugh at me for offering long hours in voluntary work have now been inspired…”

Enabling factors and constraints

In general running the Nelson Award is rather straight forward and ran easy.We did get challenged getting main stream to cover and support the project. We overcame that by using facebook as our major platform to share and tell our stories. We also minimised over 20 social media to spread the cause because we lacked enough resources to boost online. This group of social media volunteers shared every story and post about the project which grew our facebook page from 190 likes in January to 1.9k currently, organically. We also received great technical support from Cemcod (www.cemcod.org/).Also, we are part of MasterPeace which makes the local impact of 1 Uganda boy or girl something that can make global impact. MasterPeace is a global grassroot organisation with over 50 MasterPeace clubs in 37 countries. Last year over 350 projects were executed locally. MasterPeace mobilises talents all over the world with “soft power”, music, art and play. We use creativity, drive and the energy of people to bring people together. Our vision is that we have over 7 billion talents, not 7 billion problems. Sometimes you have to dig a little deeper, but every persons has unique talents to contribute to a sustainable future. After bringing people together we organize dialogues with the intention to look what connects us, not what separates us. Together we create a sustainable future via capacity building programs, e- learning, bootcamps and creating jobs via social enterprises. Our growing partner network are of great help. MasterPeace clubs are the grassroot local changemakers who can be your local implementation partner on projects that are related to the Sustainable Development Goals.The strength of the organisation is that we all learn from each others successes and failures. We share best practises and see how we can implement a project carried out in Pakistan in our local cities and villages in Uganda. But this also works the other way around. On MasterPeace social media platforms we share our Be a Nelson Award with different countries. We mentor other countries that want to start the Be a Nelson somewhere else. We have learning platforms from our local NGO’s all over the world. In the headquarters in the Netherlands we have several partners with platforms used by either corporate partners or education platforms for primary, secondary and universities. We not only share our projects with MasterPeace clubs, Private partners (for example the Dutch Police and SNS Bank organized a Be a Nelson Award), Schools (PCOU Willibrord schools in Utrecht organized a Be a Nelson Award) we also share it with strategic partners. The Respect Education Foundation for example is one of our close partners in the Netherlands with a high quality online learning environment called LessonUp. Over 10.000 teachers in the Netherlands make use of the learning materials. We provide them with inspirational stories and how to carry out the Be a Nelson Campaign. This are examples from just the reach of the outcome of our projects in the Netherlands.

Sustainability and replicability

As mentioned above our great asset with assuring coverage and spreading our best practises globally is us being part of MasterPeace which makes the local impact of 1 Uganda boy or girl something that can make global impact. MasterPeace is a global grassroot organisation with over 50 MasterPeace clubs in 37 countries. Last year over 350 projects were executed locally. MasterPeace mobilises talents all over the world with “soft power”, music, art and play. We use creativity, drive and the energy of people to bring people together. Our vision is that we have over 7 billion talents, not 7 billion problems. Sometimes you have to dig a little deeper, but every persons has unique talents to contribute to a sustainable future. After bringing people together we organize dialogues with the intention to look what connects us, not what separates us. Together we create a sustainable future via capacity building programs, e- learning, bootcamps and creating jobs via social enterprises. Our growing partner network are of great help. MasterPeace clubs are the grassroot local changemakers who can be your local implementation partner on projects that are related to the Sustainable Development Goals.The strength of the organisation is that we all learn from each others successes and failures. We share best practises and see how we can implement a project carried out in Pakistan in our local cities and villages in Uganda. But this also works the other way around. On MasterPeace social media platforms we share our Be a Nelson Award with different countries. We mentor other countries that want to start the Be a Nelson somewhere else. We have learning platforms from our local NGO’s all over the world. In the headquarters in the Netherlands we have several partners with platforms used by either corporate partners or education platforms for primary, secondary and universities. We not only share our projects with MasterPeace clubs, Private partners (for example the Dutch Police and SNS Bank organized a Be a Nelson Award), Schools (PCOU Willibrord schools in Utrecht organized a Be a Nelson Award) we also share it with strategic partners. The Respect Education Foundation for example is one of our close partners in the Netherlands with a high quality online learning environment called LessonUp. Over 10.000 teachers in the Netherlands make use of the learning materials. We provide them with inspirational stories and how to carry out the Be a Nelson Campaign. This are examples from just the reach of the outcome of our projects in the Netherlands. Within Uganda we also create a long-term commitment with the Nelsons. We will facilitate a quarterly meeting with al the Nelsons of the Month. During this meeting best practises can be shared as well as challenges. By supporting each other with the difficulties and cheering for each others successes we will create a long-term Nelson network. With the winners we also make sure that we have follow-up sessions to coach them on how to spend their seed-money wisely to grow their ideas.

Conclusions

Prior to this initiative, we realized that there are many young people doing great things for their communities, but just because they are not well-known Ugandans celebrities, their efforts went unrecognized. This entire project has been an experience for all of us at MasterPeace Uganda, our volunteers, board members of the jury and even our nominees. Their personal stories will tell the highlights. In February, 20 year old Joy M. Natocho a university student at MUBS – Makerere University Business School was elected Nelson of the Month for her and since then her life has been on a constant rollercoaster. “Being voted Nelson of the month changed my life. It earned me a nomination in The Ashoka African Youth Champion competition, I was invited to give a presentation at the UNDP in Uganda and got me a job. I was also hired at the Empowered Civil Organization (ECO) after the Chief Executive Officer read my story on the Master Peace Club Uganda Facebook page. I have also met more people with the same passions, shared ideas with them, bringing my dream to start my own non-governmental organization a step closer. Even my friends who used to laugh at me for offering long hours in voluntary work have now been inspired…”For our partners coordinator, Enock Nsubuga it’s been such an experience“Right from the call for nominees and social media volunteers, I was blown away by what these young people were doing, especially 24 year old Kiggundu Rodney’s Activism with Art project, in which he uses his Bachelor’s degree In Industrial and Fine arts from Makerere University to contribute to SDG 1 at Streetlights Uganda to empower street kids with skills to make photo frames and paper beads.”Pherrie Kim – Member of jury“I have been so blessed to work with Master Peace and to be part of the jury listening to all these young people doing so much in our society with almost nothing but the heart to serve. To see a boy child, understand the plight of the girl child was amazing! 19 year old Monday Patrick read the story of South Sudanese girls in refugee camps sharing sanitary towels from the papers and immediately decided to mobilize for support with his friends. They didn’t have money but they collected sanitary pads and clothes for these girls which he delivered Bibidibidi in northern Uganda, one of the largest refugee camps in the world. At such a tender age he is already contributing to SDG 5.”nProssy Kawala – Member of the jury“As an advocate for SDG 4, I was really inspired by Kenneth Ssemuwemba of Hope 4 Street kids who didn’t take pity on himself for being raised in a slum but instead chose to become the difference using education as a tool to combat crime in Namuwongo by creating an education center. Am also happy that we used our platform to spread hope and positivity in a space where the media rarely celebrates great change makers.”

Other sources of information

We share all our information about the Nelsons on our facebook page:
https://www.facebook.com/masterpeaceclubuganda/

#TheNelsonAward
#BeANelson
#YoungChangeMakers

- https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/topics
- masterpeace.org
- http://www.masterpeace.org/masterpeace-around-the-world-uganda/
- https://www.cemcod.org/

Examples of SDG's related project
-SDG 1 Story & Link https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=1011890832291710&id=6837005…
-SDG 2 Story & Link https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=1048100828670710&id=6837005… -SDG 16 Story & Link https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=967640763383384&id=68370050… -SDG 3 Story & Link https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=996365370510923&id=68370050…

SDGS & Targets

Goal 4

Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all

Goal 2

End hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture

Goal 11

Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable

Goal 5

Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls

Goal 16

Promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, provide access to justice for all and build effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels